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The Short North was a grittier place in the fall of 2001 when Columbus restaurant entrepreneur
Elizabeth Lessner opened Betty’s Fine Food & Spirits on N. High Street.

It launched something of an empire for Lessner and her partners in the six Columbus Food League
restaurants, but Betty’s now is moving.

Citing high rent and building problems that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix,
Lessner will close Betty’s at the end of the month and move it to 340 E. Gay St.

The new Betty’s doesn’t have a firm opening date, nor will it be exactly the same as the old
one.

“We’ll keep our top 10 favorites,” Lessner said of dishes such as macaroni and cheese, meatloaf
and Tang martinis. Then, she will let chef Kevin Eby have free rein with a new menu.

The E. Gay Street location is not far from two other restaurants in which Lessner has an
interest: Tip Top, also on E. Gay Street, and Grass Skirt Tiki Room, on N. Grant Avenue.

“We’re sad to see Betty’s go,” said Betsy Pandora, executive director of the Short North
Alliance, a nonprofit group that looks out for businesses and property owners in the neighborhood. “
Liz and the whole of the Columbus Food League have been such strong partners with the Short North
and have contributed to the neighborhood’s vibrancy.”

When Lessner opened Betty’s, “the Short North had no arches,” she blogged on Wednesday in
announcing her plan to move the restaurant. “The Short North cap wasn’t built yet. Homeless people
slept under the staircase behind our restaurant, panhandlers were everywhere, crime was high.”

As business owners and community members invested in their neighborhood, the crime rate fell,
the streets and sidewalks got cleaner and

better-lighted, and, more recently, the Short North Alliance began marketing the neighborhood’s
hipness.

“We continue to promote the Short North as a vibrant cultural destination, an exciting arts
community and a place that fosters the success of small businesses,” Pandora said.

Perhaps because of the neighborhood’s comeback, rent got too high for Betty’s, which serves
affordable plates of pasta, Lessner said. And long-standing problems with the restaurant’s
ventilation system forced a day of reckoning: invest in the building, close the restaurant or move
it.

Lessner’s friend Randy Walker, a Downtown real-estate broker, offered a solution: move Betty’s
to a building he owns next to the Hills Market Downtown and across N. Grant Avenue from the
Columbus College of Art & Design.

Now, Lessner and her employees, all of whom will keep their jobs at the new Betty’s or be
offered jobs at other Columbus Food League restaurants, are looking forward to the amenities the
new location will provide: air conditioning, a patio, adequate space for recycling bins, and even
an herb garden.

“I feel she’s got some years left in her,” Lessner said of her first restaurant. “Betty’s ain’t
dead yet.”